October 22, 2012

In the exhibition Fast Forward: Modern Moments 1913 ›› 2013, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, is explorin the development of modern and contemporary art by selecting key years in art history that represent watershed moments in the 20th century.

The exhibition presents approximately 100 works of art created during the years 1913, 1929, 1950, 1961, and 1988, as well as the art of today. The exhibition examines the years prior to the start of World War I and the Great Depression, the lead-up to postwar American prosperity and the years preceding the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall and how artists responded to and were influenced by events on the world stage.

The exhibition also presents the works of contemporary artists Aaron Curry, Katharina Grosse, and Sarah Sze, whose work extends themes first explored in the 20th century and updates them for the 21st century.

Fast Forward: Modern Moments 1913 ›› 2013 is one of the largest surveys of 20th-century art to ever be exhibited in the southeastern United States. Co-organized by the High Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), as part of the two museums’ ongoing collaboration, the exhibition is on view since October 13, 2012, through January 20, 2013.

“These periods of time ushered in new ways of thinking that forever transformed the artistic landscapes,” said Michael E. Shapiro, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., Director. “We’re delighted that this partnership with MoMA will enable our visitors to see how the work of artists from different eras was influenced by major historical events.”

The exhibition includes iconic works from each represented year, including:

Michael Rooks, the High’s Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, has chosen Aaron Curry, Katharina Grosse and Sarah Sze to highlight the art of 2013. Sarah Sze, who will represent the United States in the 2013 Venice Biennale, created a site-specific installation for the High. Aaron Curry debuts three new works—monumental, polychromed steel sculptures titled “Boo,” “Thing” and “Deadhead”—which are installed on the Museum’s lawn. Rounding out the selection, a large three-dimensional painting by Katharina Grosse are on display on the skyway level of the Wieland Pavilion.

“Aaron Curry, Katharina Grosse, and Sarah Sze are artists who push the boundaries of artistic practice,” said Rooks. “Each is known for their conceptually open-ended and physically immersive works that invite viewers to walk through and around them. In the process of physically exploring these works, viewers draw out the present moment, stretching time toward moments yet to come.”

AARON CURRY (born 1972), on view through May 2013

Originally trained as a painter, Aaron Curry turned to sculpture while he was an undergraduate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he first became interested in the flat planes that characterized the work of David Smith and Isamu Noguchi. Aaron Curry’s interplay between two and three dimensions encourages viewers to walk around his work, creating new lines of sight as planes of color rotate into nothingness. In his own words, his sculptures are “almost like a cubist painting . . . [they] refer to the surface but give you illusion at the same time. It’s an awkward space that I still find rather exciting to play with.” Since earning his M.F.A. from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, he has exhibited in dozens of group shows throughout the United States and Europe as well as solo shows in Los Angeles, Berlin, London and New York. In 2010, Aaron Curry received a fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin, an experience that culminated in an exhibition at the Schinkel Pavilion in early 2011. His work has been praised by critics Holland Cotter and Roberta Smith, the latter of whom proclaimed Curry’s work to be “physically inventive and sculpturally inclined.”

KATHARINA GROSSE (born 1961), on view through January 20, 2013

The Berlin-based artist Katharina Grosse’s distinctive approach to painting and installation is characterized by the simultaneous expansion and elimination of boundaries for painting, “Abstract Expressionism opened up new ways to look at painting, but it also hindered, to a certain extent, painting’s development. Negating painting’s illusionism narrowed it down to applying paint to a flat surface. I have a totally different approach. I don’t think that a painting is a coherent, closed system that only takes place within its borders.” Her works challenge traditional notions of painting and architectural space and invite viewers to confront their spatial boundaries. Katharina Grosse resists identification with specific media, historical movements or other affiliations, preferring instead to remain as uninhibited as possible. Since 1996 she has exhibited in more than 30 solo shows and several dozen group shows in galleries and museums across the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, the Tate St. Ives in England, the Museum for New Art in Freiburg, Germany, and Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark (Wanafoto has published a post about this exhibition with pictures of Katharina Grosse artworks). In 2011 she installed her monumental installation “One Floor up More Highly” at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, which received critical praise, including the article, “Chromatic Theater,” published in Art in America. In addition to her artistic practice, Katharina Grosse is currently a professor of fine arts at the Arts Academy of Dusseldorf.

SARAH SZE (born 1969), on view through January 20, 2013

Educated at Yale University and the School of Visual Arts, New York, Sarah Sze has emerged as one of the foremost installation artists of her generation. Best known for her elaborate and gravity-defying installations—microcosmic spaces of dizzying complexity—her work often seems to be a three-dimensional collage in which the placement of every object holds meaning both outside the work and within it. Her coupling of familiar objects—towels, chairs, ladders, for exmaple—with ones that are less immediately identifiable provokes the viewer to create rich associations between otherwise unrelated items. Over the last fifteen years, she has shown in group exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, and at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Monographic exhibitions of her work have been organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Whitney; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others. Her permanent installations are on display at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Berkley. Sarah Sze has been the recipient of numerous honors, including the Atelier Calder prize and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and most recently she has been selected to represent the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Sarah Sze lives and works in New York City.

Fast Forward: Modern Moments 1913 ›› 2013 continues a multi-year, multi-exhibition collaboration between the High and MoMA, which began in 2009 with “Monet Water Lilies,” the first in a series of six exhibitions, followed by “Modern by Design” in summer 2011 and “Picasso to Warhol: Fourteen Modern Masters,”. The initiative builds on successful past collaborations between the High and MoMA that resulted in four exhibitions presented in Atlanta between 1997 and 2000. This project extends ties between the institutions through professional exchanges, development of educational programs and publications and reciprocal admission benefits.

This exhibition is organized by Jodi Hauptman, MoMA Curator of Drawings, and Samantha Friedman, MoMA Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Drawings, in collaboration with David Brenneman, the High’s Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Frances B. Bunzl Family Curator of European Art, and Michael Rooks, the High’s Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Fast Forward: Modern Moments 1913 ›› 2013 is accompanied by a fully illustrated